In Horoma's Head 14

Hi everyone,

Last month flew by, not necessarily in the smoothest way though, but here we are already at the end of February.

Let's get started with a short and sweet newsletter for this month!

🐏🐏🐏

The World of Work and Balance 👔🥼🧢

I probably wrote that before, but it's important to keep a balance regarding work. When you love your work, and especially when you're a freelancer, taking on more and more contracts feels nice. Until it doesn't.

Quick take away from this past month for my fellow freelancers is the following : try to identify as accurately as possible what is your goal or limit for each month of work. Whenever you reach that limit, do your best to avoid taking on more work. And if you can't avoid it, do your best to compensate by taking a bit more time off afterwards.

This month has been hectic, but the only reason it still felt "ok", was that I knew that March was going to be entirely off for me. Had I taken more contracts for next month, my mindset and optimism would have been totally different through those last few projects I just finished.

Take care of yourself first and foremost.

The World of Feedback 🔊📢🔇

I did a video on the subject a while ago,,) tackle it quite extensively in my course also, but feedback is paramount in our industry if we want to deliver the best work we can.

Not to pat myself on the back, but last project something happened and the fact that it struck me means that it was rare enough to be noticed. And that thing was my client telling me in person, that he loved the final result of the project we worked together on.

The important part here is "in person". It's a completely different feeling to hear a client telling you they're happy with your image, and reading it in an email. I do suck at receiving compliments so I must have said something like "uh cool, thanks", but I still managed to point out that this will to communicate positive feedback was rare from clients which led to an interesting (short) exchange on the topic with my client.

And I realized this is something very weird that is anchored in our habits nowadays : to be very stingy with positive feedbacks.

A couple of takeaway from this :

• I think I'll actively try to be more demonstrative when I'm happy with a client. Whether it's because of the relationship, the feedback I got or the project itself.
• I might actually make it more clear with my future clients that I value positive feedback as much as negative one. I usually focus on negative ones because they help you identify what works and what doesn't, but positive feedback is also interesting to give you a sense of the value your clients seem to be getting.
• Last but not least, and I think I got this little habit from Todd Henry, I've started journaling about how each project I work on goes, and this is the type of little event I do make sure to write in those entries. So that when I get back to a project with a similar client, I can read how the past project went, and see what I can expect.

The World of Subjectivity  🎇🕶🥽

Speaking of Todd Henry, I read an interesting bit in his latest newsletter that I want to share with you here, like litterally copy/paste for you to enjoy :

_"Author and entrepreneur Derek Sivers once made a wonderful observation. He said that many people marvel at the ideas of their peers and exclaim “I could never come up with something like that. All my ideas are too obvious.” ​ The funny thing is, according to Sivers, those brilliant and amazing ideas often feel just as obvious to the person having them. As he put it, “Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them.”_

Todd Henry later adds

_"As you go about your work this week, be mindful not to dismiss an idea simply because it feels too obvious at first. It may be obvious to you but not to others. Brilliance often feels commonplace at first."_

I'll always remember the words of my brother when I started my Youtube channel thinking "yeah but I'm really talking about stuff everybody knows", and he answered "there's always something you know that other people don't". And with time this odd feeling never really disappears. Working on my course and sharing it with people has been a very strange experience where sometimes you talk about things that seem so logical and basic and yet you have part of the audience that will look like they had the biggest epiphany of their artists lives.

The interesting bit for me is also the reciprocal. This means that we can learn valuable things from anyone, especially unexpected interlocutor.

The world of Art and AI 📚🖌🎨

A very nice website that leverages the power of AI to neatly organize famous paintings in a database that you can search using keywords and what they call motifs and themes. Enjoy.

The World of Process 🎞🕶🎢

Process is key. But which process?

In my case I tend to rely on a tailored and expanded version of the double diamond. But there are plenty of others available.

I don't know if this is an extensive list, but this little pdf about design process does go in depth on all the ways you can tackle a given problem, and might give you some ideas on how to optimize yours!

http://www.dubberly.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/ddo_designprocess.pdf

The World of Contracts 📄💰📄

Had a discussion with a friend earlier this month - that went on a bit longer in my head because I tend to overthink everything - about contracts.
Subject arose because due to some deadline changes I was starting to feel the limit of how my contracts are setup with clients and get a little bit frustrated at their demands.

Shortly put, I usually offer as many reviews as the client want, and generally tailor the length of the contract so that this number never exceeds around 5 reviews (on average it's more around 3).

Problems start when the deadline is pushed, and we have more time... to do more reviews.

And for some reason this event (while not standard, it definitely happens every now and then) was sort of a blind spot in my contract.

In my mind contracts are a simple way of protecting myself financially and psychologically. Financially because I need my practice to be profitable. Psychologically because I need to make sure everything in a business relationship is clear so that I don't have to do any extra work if there is an issue, and stress about it.

Key takeaway from this little mismanagement of my part :

• I need to put a financial incentive for clients to stay within the former deadline set in the initial contract.

I haven't thought about it extensively yet, but here are some leads I'll look more into and implement in an updated version of my contract :

• Fees for extending the duration of a contract
• Fees for any reviews done outside of the contract former duration

The world of Life-like Digital Painting 🖼🎨🎉

An issue I had with digital painting for a while has finally been adressed in the software presented here. For those of you familiar with physical painting, physical colors blend differently than light colors. While this for sure must have brought some interesting headaches to the developers, I'm glad to see such convincing result already. 

You can see it in practice with a comparison with other software here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATzVPVNp1qA

And if you want to learn a bit more, just go here

The world of Composition From The Ground Up 🥼🥽🎨

I'll finish this newsletter with some words about my course. As stated above, I'm taking the whole month of March off to focus on finishing putting together Composition From The Ground Up. 2 months ago I thought a whole month off would suffice. I spent last Saturday in a coffee shop revisiting the actual to do list of what I have to do, and a month actually seems like a nice challenge to finish all this. We'll see how it goes.

One thing is sure, on the one hand I've become very good at accurately gauge how much time an archviz task would take. On the other hand, I've completely misjudged how long updating this course would take. Guess it's a common thing to experience when you're dealing with new things 😁

That's all for this first newsletter, hope you'll find some useful stuff in there.

If you find this utterly boring and useless, please let me know before unsubscribing 🎀. If on the other hand you do like it, then I'm glad, and feel free to share it with your archviz pals that would maybe like it too by sending them here : https://www.horoma.net/newsletter-subscription

Thank you

All the best for the upcoming month!

Cheers

Simon